With increased use of digital networks such as the Internet, many businesses and other entities have found it beneficial to have their own web sites. Typically, a corporate web site may include multiple pages, for example, for multiple departments within the business, for multiple products or services and the like. In creating such sites, a business often finds it beneficial to maintain a uniform “look and feel,” throughout its site, to improve consistency and ease of use. To achieve that uniform look and feel, businesses typically develop guidelines for their employees to follow when developing web pages. These guidelines typically define certain aspects of look and feel, content and procedures for creating and making changes to a web page. One aspect of these guidelines is often directed to the overall layout of given web page. For example, one business may specify that each of its web pages include an identical company banner at the top of the page, similar margins at the sides and bottom of the page, a similar color scheme for the background and lettering on the page and the like.
Due to rapid technological changes and the need to frequently update electronic layouts, guidelines for creating and changing those layouts may themselves change very rapidly as well. For example, in the context of corporate web sites, described above, web site content and format may be updated very frequently. Other examples of electronic layouts provided via digital networks may include any type of electronic layout used on television, electronic message boards, billboards, scoreboard displays, airport displays, cell phones, personal digital assistants (“PDAs”), digital pagers and the like.
In the context of a large corporation, many employees may typically provide or suggest new web page layouts and content for the business. Some of these employees may have limited, if any, knowledge of computer programming and may not understand how to create a web page layout, how to provide their suggestions for a web page in efficient ways or how to achieve the uniform look and feel for a given web page that their business hopes to achieve. The combination, described above, of rapidly changing technology, the desire of businesses to keep their web sites current as well as relatively uniform in appearance, and the input of suggestions for web pages from many different employees may create a drain on an information technology (“IT”) department in a large corporation. For example, such a department may spend a large amount of time and resources manually developing new web page layouts and either inputting content into those layouts or creating content that matches those layouts. Some currently available systems, such as the Microsoft Frontpage software, available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., which is hereby incorporated by reference, provide web page creation tools. Current systems, however, do not provide a method for web page layout creation that is accessible by multiple employees in a corporation, via a network, that maintains a uniform look and feel for web pages created within a corporation, and that enables employees with little or no technical background to create, change and enter content into web page layouts.
A need therefore exists for systems and methods for efficiently creating web page layouts within a business setting. A need also exists for systems for creating web page layouts with a uniform look and feel. Ideally, such systems would be accessible by employees of a business via a network and would enable employees with little or no knowledge of computer programming to create and change web page layouts and to use those layouts as templates for creating web pages.